Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "Lex Clips" channel.

  1.  @dustybaron5942  > none of the articles of secession at that time mentioned tariffs That's not true, not that it matters, because they weren't declarations of war, nor were they even declarations of what the southern states sought to gain by seceding -- that would be like if a woman split up with a man because the man didn't help with the dishes or vacuuming or any other such housework, the man felt he had a right to a continued relationship with her with or without her continued consent and he violently beat her to force her to continue in the relationship... that would be like claiming that the woman's grievances about the relationship proved that the beating she received and her resistance to that beating was about trying to force the man to do his share of the housework, when in reality she wasn't trying to force him to do anything but was just wanting to go her own way -- but the basis of your claim nonetheless isn't even true. > The Southern states at that time were far more worried about losing their slaves And what threat of losing their slaves would you like to imagine the southern states faced by remaining in the union that they wouldn't have faced if they had won their independence? That's nothing but an inexplicable revisionist myth. Official declaration of the US Congress, not about the causes of the break-up but about the objectives of the war itself: "this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States [i.e. slavery], but... to preserve the Union [i.e. maintain control over the southern states against their will, without their consent, and to deny them the right to independence and self-government]"
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  2.  @88Kakyoin88  > If slavery was a cause for the succession that lead to the war, then slavery was the cause of the war. Let me expose the foolishness of that reasoning: If Islam was a cause for the 9/11 attacks that led to the US invasion of Iraq, then Islam was the cause of the war in Iraq.
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  3. Why not expose what a biased fool he is?
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  4.  @colinmurphy8393  > The USA would not be able to end slavery in an independent CSA any more than It could end it in Brazil And in 1860-61 when the southern states seceded and when Lincoln called for war there was no more prospect of the USA ending slavery in the southern states than there was of the USA ending slavery in Brazil. Slavery was only finally abolished in the USA because multiple former Confederate states voted to ratify the 13th amendment.
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  5.  @aaronfleming9426  "anti-slavery" in what sense? In the sense of being pro-protective tariffs for northern industry (and pro-other crony capitalist measures)? If he was anti-slavery" in the sense of denying slaveholding interests anything else they might have gained by seceding, why don't you say what that was?
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  6.  @aaronfleming9426  > 1. Was established by the People, not the States In what sense? You didn't read the Madison quote I just shared explaining how the constitution was actually established, did you? > 2. Removes earlier language codifying the sovereignty of the States Whatever powers the states had under the Articles that weren't delegated to the federal government or prohibited by the constitution to the state were explicitly reserved by the constitution to the states (not that they wouldn't have been implicitly reserved otherwise.) > 3. Explicitly denies the States certain powers normally enjoyed by sovereign nations None of which have any relevance to the issues at play in the secession of the southern states' secession (or you'd actually be able to make a relevant argument instead of just hinting at an argument that can't actually be made.) > their masters who, far from being an oppressed party, were actually OVER-represented in their own government That's why Republicans were able to win an outright majority in the electoral college with only thirty-some percent of the electorate (which is to say before counting any blacks at all), right? Tell me again who was over-represented? > northern whites had more claim to being oppressed Those people that the constitution allowed to win elections with only thirty-some percent of the electorate, that's who you're calling "oppressed" by the constitutional system, right? > The secessionists did not for one moment believe in the right to revolution as a principle. They certainly believed in the right of states to secede and maintaining the Confederacy only on the basis of the voluntary consent of the member states. Alexander Stephens: "Ours is a government founded upon the consent of sovereign States, and will be itself destroyed by the very act whenever it attempts to maintain or perpetuate its existence by force over its respective members. The surest way to check any inclination in North Carolina to quit our sisterhood, if any such really exist even to the most limited extent among her people, is to show them that the struggle is continued, as it was begun, for the maintenance of constitutional liberty. If, with this great truth ever before them, a majority of her people should prefer despotism to liberty, I would say to her, as to a wayward sister, 'depart in peace.'" Jefferson Davis: "The experiment instituted by our revolutionary fathers, of a voluntary Union of sovereign States for purposes specified in a solemn compact, had been perverted by those who, feeling power and forgetting right, were determined to respect no law but their own will... "...never was there a people whose interests and principles committed them so fully to a peaceful policy as those of the Confederate States. By the character of their productions they are too deeply interested in foreign commerce wantonly to disturb it. War of conquest they cannot wage, because the Constitution of their Confederacy admits of no coerced association. Civil war there cannot be between States held together by their volition only. The rule of voluntary association..."
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  7.  @aaronfleming9426  > I read the Madison quote, I just don't agree with him. Do you have any reason for disagreeing with what he said? If so, explain why what he said isn't factually correct. Or do you just not like the facts he laid out? > reserved to the states or the people And why do you think that's relevant? Why do you think you have a point here? Remember the context of this part of the discussion was what you said about the sovereignty of the states under the Articles. > Hey, when the vote splits 4 ways, you can win a majority in the EC without 50% of the electorate Do you think that's how Republicans won in the electoral college in 1860? It wasn't. Republicans won over 50% of the vote in enough states to win a majority in the electoral college with only thirty-some percent of the entire electorate. Republicans would have won exactly the same if the other sixty-some percent of the electorate had united behind a single candidate. And part of the reason they didn't unite behind a single candidate is because the rules didn't incentivize them to do so. If Northern Democrats had won enough northern states to block Republicans from winning a majority in the electoral college, then Republicans wouldn't have won. Those are the rules, and those are the rules Democrats played by. You may be ignorant enough to think the presidency can be won with a plurality in the electoral college, but that's not how it is. > You may not like the rules, but that's how it is. How convenient of you to forget what the point was. The point wasn't to complain about the rules. The point was that you said the South was over-represented when in reality it was the North's sectional party, Republicans, that the rules allowed to win a majority in the electoral college with only thirty-some percent of the electorate. > any representative government where people can secede just because they don't like the results of a free and fair election is more anarchist than republican First of all, any relationship that's based on violence and threats of violence rather than on continued voluntary consent isn't a union. It may be an empire, a despotism, a democratic kleptocracy... but a union can only be a union if it's based on the continued voluntary consent of the members. That's what a real union is, and that's what the United States began as and what Republicans continued to pretend they wanted to preserve, but you can no more preserve a political union through violence and threats of violence than you can preserve a marriage by beating your wife. If you're using violence and threats of violence, whatever you're preserving isn't a union, and that change in the nature of DC is very significant. Secondly, while the election itself may have been free and fair, the issue was that the party that won the election had already proven that its willingness to disregard the constitutional rules. If Candidate Smith from Party X runs for president promising to disregard the constitution in order to advance an agenda that his constituency supports and he's able to win a free and fair election (even with just thirty-some percent of the electorate) and his party is able to win enough seats in Congress to block any attempt to impeach him, and if Party X is willing to destroy the constitution, would you summarize that as a "free and fair election." That's missing the point, isn't it? > Obviously Davis and Stevens believed in the right to secession (for themselves, at least) But those quotes were both from after secession and the establishment of the Confederate constitution. They weren't talking about the right of secession under the US constitution. They were talking about the Confederate constitution and the rights of the Confederate states under it. You can ignore the fact or pretend it doesn't matter, but the clear historical fact is that the leaders of the Confederacy believed in the right of Confederate states to secede and in maintaining the Confederacy only on the basis of the voluntary consent of the member states, and that's obviously a stark difference from what the "Union" [sic] stood for.
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  8.  @kninezbanks  > there would have been no secession without the will to secede to protect slavery Secede to protect slavery??? That's just nonsense, nothing but an inexplicable revisionist myth. What threat do you think there was to slavery that seceding offered any prospect of protecting against?
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  9.  @aaronfleming9426  > Because you're wrong that Lincoln had no objection to slavery I didn't say anything about Lincoln. All I said was to ask, "How does it make sense to say that secession was about slavery in the territories if seceding meant that the seceding states intentionally forfeited their rights to the territories (which they did)?" So what are you talking about? > Of course everyone knew that if slavery wasn't allowed in the territories, there would soon be enough free states to change the Constitution "Everyone"? Who's "everyone"? All your imaginary friends and/or bogeymen? Do you actually believe that preposterous myth? Really? Despite the complete lack of historical evidence? Despite the fact that you have no idea how many "free states" it would have taken to ratify a constitutional amendment without the support of the slave states? > I'm not sure how you can rationally blame Lincoln for a war that had started before his inauguration. Lincoln held the final responsibility for refusing to withdraw Union forces from the Confederacy. And the war didn't really start when the South, without killing a single Northerner, evicted northern forces from its own territory. The war really started when Union forces on Lincoln's orders invaded the southern states. > Then there's the fact that states like Texas held flagrantly illegal secession conventions, denying seats to counties the rebels suspected would not support secession. Show me which counties Lincoln didn't declare to be in rebellion, or show me which counties Lincoln ordered dealt with differently by the Union army; otherwise your argument has no standing to even begin with. > The Corwin Amendment was a losing proposition from the beginning Indeed, because it didn't address the real issues. If the threat had been a constitutional amendment (1) there would be historical evidence to prove it and (2) an irrevocable amendment precluding such a threat to slaveholders would have appealed to at least some of the slaveholding interests, but there's no historical support for that myth either.
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  10.  @aaronfleming9426  By that stupid logic, no future threat to slavery could have played any role in secession either. But unlike the revisionist myths of threats to southern slaveholding rights posed by Republicans, the Morrill tariff was a real, articulable threat, actually passed before the war even started, and clearly articulated in the platform Republican ran on before any of the southern states had seceded.
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  11.  @aiauc  > Start telling them what to do... and make them abolish slavery like UK did in 1834 (about 20 years before the US). Do you actually believe anyone was trying to force the southern states to abolish slavery? Or are you just repeating what you know is a revisionist propaganda myth on purpose?
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  12.  @Gangreene  > What about that Confederate Constitution? Explicitly enshrined Slavery for the CSA, and did not allow any new States that might join to NOT allow Slavery. Not that it would be any proof of what the war was fought over if that were true, but the Confederate constitution did no such thing. It guaranteed the right of slaveholders to take slaves to any territories of the CSA, but that was no different than what the US Supreme Court had already said the US constitution implicitly guaranteed. The Confederate constitution very clearly did NOT prohibit states from abolishing slavery, nor did it prohibit states that had abolished slavery from joining the Confederacy.
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  13. So they were pro-slavery racists. So were the Americans that fought in the First American Independence War in 1776. That didn't give the North any more right to rule over the South without their consent than it gave England a right to rule over the 13 colonies after they chose independence for themselves. And the North's leaders were plenty racist, too. Lincoln: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races …there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
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  14. > So while slavery most definitely was a big issue There were issues relating to slavery that led to secession (like whether the northern states would fulfill their constitutional obligation to deliver up fugitive slaves or whether slaveholding rights would be protected in US territories like Kansas as a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court had already declared the constitution guaranteed), but not even any of those issues relating to slavery were at stake in the war. Neither side fought for anything to do with slavery. Your main point was very well said, though.
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  15.  @EPUEPUEPUEPU  > The south attacked first, literally destroying your analogy. No, it doesn't. The South didn't attack the North in the North. The North refused to leave the South and the South only attacked northern forces in the South, only to the point of expelling them from the South. If a husband and wife have separate houses and continue to live in their separate houses after they get married and while they're married they jointly hire a security company to provide armed security for their houses, the husband has no absolutely no valid reason and no right to try to control the security of his wife's house after she splits up with him, and she has every right to evict, with force if necessary, his armed agents from her property. But even if she had overstepped her rights and done something wrong in evicting her husband's armed agents from her house, in any case it most certainly doesn't give the husband the right to send more armed agents back to take control of everything that belonged to his ex-wife and force her back into a relationship with him forever. Obviously it's over-the-top absurd to suggest that a woman would have to let her husband's armed agents control who enters and leaves her house after she splits up with him, but that's exactly what you're suggesting in denying a woman's right to have those armed agents evicted after she splits up with her husband. > Second lets change your analogy and replace Husband with master and wife with slave and that would fit your scenario better. Indeed it would! A husband can't beat his wife in order to prevent her from leaving him; that's the relationship of a master and slave, not any relationship that can rightly be called a union. > Finally all states left because of slavery. What kind of vague, meaningless nonsense is that? The first 7 states that seceded left because of what Republicans, the party that won the votes of the North in 1860, had done and were doing. Can you even say what that was? Or can you only hide behind vague, one-word nonsense like "slavery" that in no way summarizes what the northern states had done and were doing? The next 4 states decided not to secede for the reasons the first 7 states seceded, but seceded in opposition to Lincoln's call to go to war and destroy the union, destroy government by the consent of the governed, and destroy any accountability by the federal government to the constitution.
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  16.  @aaronfleming9426  If the North didn't want a war, it shouldn't have kept its flag in the South without the consent of the southern states. But, of course, the North did want a war, because it (or at least its leaders) wanted to destroy the rule of law and the limits of the constitution and any effectual limits on the power of DC, and so it asserted a right to rule over the southern states without their consent forever, and so after exhausting all attempts at a negotiated secession, the South exercised its right to expel foreign forces from its territory.
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  17.  @aaronfleming9426  > So let's not fool ourselves by thinking that evil wars of conquest are somehow a northern thing. Except when they're between North and South, in which case it's absolutely and entirely a northern thing.
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  18. ​ @aaronfleming9426  As one northern abolitionist wrote in early 1861, "When a government becomes so corrupt as to forfeit the respect and support of the citizens in whose name it is exercised, and for whose protection and benefit it professes to act, it is very apt to resent disloyalty with the charge of treason and rebellion. … "The secession of South Carolina has been called in Congress 'a revolt,' and 'rebellion.' But this charge could come only from a total misapprehension of the nature and object of free government. Revolt is resistance to the supreme authority. But the true idea of free government is, that the people themselves are this supreme authority. How, then, can a whole united people be chargeable with this crime? Can they 'revolt' against themselves? The idea is absurd."
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  19.  @aaronfleming9426  Are you now intentionally changing the subject away from the question you originally raised? The question was whether and to what extent evil wars of conquest are a northern thing. The fact remains that in the only war between the North and South, it was only and entirely the North that waged an evil war of conquest. And the best counterargument you can make is to try to split hairs between wars of "suppression" and "conquest." Conquest means "to gain control of or subdue by military force" or "to defeat in war." By any normal definition "conquer" is unambiguously what the North did to the South. > What changed since 1814 - and 1832, and January 23, 1861 Who do think called secession treasonous in 1814? In any case, even if someone said something of the sort in 1814 that was 38 years after American independence and 27 years after the constitution was written. If secession was treasonous according the principles American independence was founded on or according to the constitution, why did it take multiple decades for anyone -- anyone! -- to say so? Obviously it wasn't. > if it was intended to be broken by every member of the confederacy at will But that wasn't the question in 1860-61. The southern states didn't secede "at will." They declared the constitutional compact broken by the northern states. As South Carolina said in its declaration of causes, "the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation." And what other remedy could there be for situation where a majority of the states (like the non-slaveholding states represented in 1860) break their constitutional obligations to the other states? As Thomas Jefferson said, " the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, -- delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government... to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." > And how could representative government ever work if every member could break it at will and time they don't like the results of an election? Just like the EU, for example, and "as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge," to quote Jefferson again. What alternative do you think there is?
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  20.  @aaronfleming9426  > Not changing the subject at all. In my viewpoint, unilateral secession is illegal But the point you made and the point I was responding to was about evil wars of conquest being/not being a northern thing, so if you're making some stupid legal argument, yes, obviously you're changing the subject. And if you thought your legal argument were worth defending, you could respond to the challenges I also then made to that argument, but I bet you can just change the subject yet again, can't you?
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  21.  @aaronfleming9426  Indefensible arguments (including arguments that can only be maintained by changing the subject) are indeed stupid. Conquest means "to gain control of or subdue by military force" or "to defeat in war." By any normal definition "conquer" is unambiguously what the North did to the South.
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  22. Britain is rapidly becoming an Orwellian dystopia.
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  23.  @TheStapleGunKid  "All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war." In other words, all believed in this vague and inexplicable "somehow" myth. "Lincoln had nothing to do with [the Corwin amendment]." Presidents play no role in amending the constitution. But Congress passed the amendment because Republicans with views just like Lincoln's supported it. The fact that he was the president-elect instead of a congressmen is an irrelevant deflection. "Finally, the Corwin amendment never even came close to being ratified, so it was really a non-issue." Only because the war broke out. There's no reason to believe Northerners at the state level would have otherwise been any less supportive of the amendment than their representatives in DC. "the Corwin amendemnt was insufficient to preserve slavery, since it wouldn't stop Lincoln from banning the expansion of it." Then secession was insufficient to "preserve" slavery, since secession wouldn't stop Lincoln from preventing the "expansion" of it. "Lincoln would never compromise on his election platform to ban slavery's expansion, not even to save the Union." And it's at least as true and infinitely more relevant that Lincoln would never compromise on DC control over the southern states, not even to free all the slaves immediately.
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  24.  @boatdetective  > Lincoln was demonstrably anti slavery. Not with regards to slavery in the southern states, not unless you could being pro-protective tariffs for northern industry as "anti-slavery." > The Confederacy was openly racist. So was the North. > a moral stain on all of Southern culture due to its refusal to openly accept and denounce its own sins So what's your argument? Than morally superior Yankees therefore had a right to rule over Southerners without their consent? You sound an awfully lot like the people that argued the superiority of white Americans entitled them to rule over blacks and to enslave them without their consent. But it's also a fact that the Union continued to practice slavery in slave states that hadn't seceded throughout the entire war, so how morally superior was the Union to the Confederacy anyway?
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  25.  @davidr3359  > While I would say they were in the minority of the whole population, they were clearly on the right side of history and saw slavery as morally wrong, criminal and inexcusable from our nation's founding on. And what did they want to do about it? The majority of northern abolitionists wanted to secede because of it. You know what else is morally wrong, criminal and inexcusable? Invading and subjugating neighboring states, and forcing your government on them without their consent (and killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process.)
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  26. Suggestion for would-be Commentators on “Was the Civil War about slavery?” Before posting your comment, read at least one or two historical documents from prominent sources that even mention the war. > the state legislature’s reasons for secession, and to justify that action. South Carolina: "We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences."
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  27.  @Carneades2012  If you want to try to prove to me what the war was fought over, why don't you try to find at least one or two historical documents from prominent sources from the time of the war that even mention the war or at least some dispute particularly between the Union and the Confederacy? Is it because all the clearest evidence is too hard to misrepresent? > The reason for secession was the failure of the non-slaveholding states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 The South Carolina declaration never even specifically mentions the Fugitive Slave Act. So, no. But the refusal of the Republican-led North to abide by the constitution (particularly including the fugitive slave clause) was certainly a reason for declaring the constitutional compact broken. > but the threat to slavery was the cause of secession What "threat" was that? All you have is some vague, unintelligible myth, don't you? The declarations of causes of secession certainly don't describe any "threat to slavery." And I bet you won't even try to describe it yourself.
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  28. "We can be clear about two things, first the South was trying to leave the Union because they felt their institution of slavery was threatened" What threat do you think there was to slavery that seceding offered any hope of protecting against? Your claim sounds like complete nonsense. "and second every southerner who fought against the Union or supported those who did was, by definition, guilty of treason and murder" No more than George Washington, Patrick Henry, etc. were. And actually much less so, because American government rested on an entirely different foundation, on the consent of the governed: "If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is, that every nation has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs; but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation." -James Madison "'Rebellion' is defined by Webster, 'an open and avowed renunciation of the authority of the government, to which one owes allegiance.' This can only apply to government on the European principle – there can be no such thing as owing allegiance in a government expressly held on the will of the people." -Joshua Blanchard “When a government becomes so corrupt as to forfeit the respect and support of the citizens in whose name it is exercised, and for whose protection and benefit it professes to act, it is very apt to resent disloyalty with the charge of treason and rebellion. … “The secession of South Carolina has been called in Congress 'a revolt,' and 'rebellion.' But this charge could come only from a total misapprehension of the nature and object of free government. Revolt is resistance to the supreme authority. But the true idea of free government is, that the people themselves are this supreme authority. How, then, can a whole united people be chargeable with this crime? Can they 'revolt' against themselves? The idea is absurd.” -George Bassett, 1861
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  29.  @jonnie106  > I'm gonna guess he thought the threat was actually aimed at the expansion of slavery and not slavery itself Who knows who you're referring to when you say "he" but regardless... the question was, "What threat do you think there was to slavery that seceding offered any hope of protecting against?" If you answer is protecting the right of slaveholders to take slaves to the western territories, you're left with the inconvenient fact that there was never any expectation that secession would protect the right of slaveholders to take slaves to the western territories but rather meant forfeiting rights that they only had so long as they remained in the union.
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  30.  @aaronfleming9426  In other words, anti-slavery in no sense that Republicans in the North couldn't have been just as effectually anti-slavery and even more so if they had allowed the southern states to exercise their right to self-government and independence from the North. But you want to imagine the war was somehow fought over any of those things???
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  31.  @aaronfleming9426  > Want me to help you out Yes, please! I don't need the help, but you need to think things through, so please try to explain to me. > a deeply dangerous neighbor to have on one's doorstep Now you're just being an idiot.
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  32.  @aaronfleming9426  The Confederate States prohibited the slave trade in their constitution, so they obviously weren't looking for a way to re-open the slave trade. Did secession help efforts to suppress the slave trade? Insofar as shipping was overwhelmingly a northern industry and it was northern, not southern, pirates that were still trafficking in slaves -- I say "pirates" because the slave trade had been illegal in the US since 1820 -- cutting ties between the North and South only made it more challenging for northern ships to do business with the South, including illegally trafficking slaves. > Why don't you actually make an argument instead of stooping to ad hominems? You don't actually expect anyone to take that particular argument that I responded to seriously, do you? Go ahead and spell it out a little if you think it's worth anything more than the response I gave it. I'm sure it's not.
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  33.  @aaronfleming9426  James Madison, Federalist #39: "That it will be... the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act."
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  34. How does it make sense to say that secession was about slavery in the territories if seceding meant that the seceding states intentionally forfeited their rights to the territories (which they did)?
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  35. ​ @aaronfleming9426  You don't lose a beat even after recognizing that the pre-secession dispute over the territories had nothing to do with any constitutionally legitimate possibilities of the North interfering with slavery in the South! Maybe when your central argument is disproved you should question the propaganda you've been consuming a little more. Why don't you try answering the question I actually asked, which would require not cutting off and ignoring the second half of the sentence? The question I actually asked again: "How does it make sense to say that secession was about slavery in the territories if seceding meant that the seceding states intentionally forfeited their rights to the territories (which they did)?" Sure, it's a fact that the southern states believed in the right under the constitution so long as they remained in the union, in the words of a 7-2 majority of the US Supreme Court, of "Every citizen...to take with him into the Territory any article of property which the Constitution of the United States recognises as property. The Constitution of the United States recognises slaves as property, and pledges the Federal Government to protect it. And Congress cannot exercise any more authority over property of that description than it may constitutionally exercise over property of any other kind." But it's obviously complete nonsense to suggest that the southern states seceded to secure rights they intentionally forfeited by seceding. Your argument is like saying that a woman divorced her husband to get her husband to help with the housework, because when she gave her reasons for splitting up with him she said he wasn't doing his share of the housework, as if she had any expectation of her ex-husband doing more of the shared housework if she divorced him and established a separate household. > What's not a mistake is that an increasing number of free states would steadily erode the political power of the slave holders. The composition of the Supreme Court might change, endangering the Dred Scott decision; the balance of power shifting toward freedom might lead to the rollback of the Fugitive Slave Act; and so on. All you need to do to demonstrate that the slave states were in full freak-out mode over the threat Lincoln and the Republicans posed to slavery I repeat: Your argument is like saying that a woman divorced her husband to get her husband to help with the housework, because when she gave her reasons for splitting up with him she said he wasn't doing his share of the housework, as if she had any expectation of her ex-husband doing more of the shared housework if she divorced him and established a separate household. You still haven't been able to cite any threat to slavery that secession offered any prospect of protecting against (other than the mythical threat of a constitutional amendment you've since recognized as the historically baseless myth that it is.) Secession, insofar as it could actually be achieved, only guaranteed that no fugitive slave would ever be delivered up from the northern states (or any of the slave states remaining in the Union) again. But you want to imagine there was some threat to slavery that secession was intended to protect against??? > Lincoln had the constitutional duty to make war on a foreign power that was attacking American forts and soldiers, stealing other American property at gunpoint So if South Korea decided that it no longer needed or wanted US military forces in South Korea, asked the US to withdraw its forces from South Korea, offered to negotiate compensation for any property of the US that it needed to possess in order to defend itself, and finally forcibly evicted US soldiers from South Korea (while continuing to offer compensation for any property the US had any claim to), you'd say that the US president would have a constitutional duty to wage war against South Korea? > What do you suppose would happen to Cuba today if it drove American troops out of Guantanamo Bay by shooting at them until they were forced to surrender - whether or not anyone was killed? First of all, the purpose of the US military in Guantanamo Bay was never to protect Cuba, so there's a night and day difference between Guantanamo Bay and a fort that the people of South Carolina wanted established for their own defense. (South Korea would be much better comparison, wouldn't it?) Secondly it's ridiculous to suggest that the southern states had no right to any of the property that had been administered by the federal government, as if when a man violates his wedding vows and the woman leaves him, the woman ought to forfeit all of their previously jointly held property rather than dividing their previously jointly held property as part of the divorce. And thirdly it's ridiculous to suggest that the southern states didn't spend months trying to peacefully negotiate a withdrawal from Fort Sumter before finally forcibly (but bloodlessly) evicting hostile military forces from their soil. But even if we lay all that aside, what argument do you have even then? That what would happen if Cuba seized Guantanamo Bay is that the US would have a right to conquer and subjugate all of Cuba and rule over the Cuban people forever? > What Lincoln did or didn't do after the fact is completely irrelevant to a discussion of the process of Texas' secession. So you think the fact that neither Lincoln nor anyone else acting on behalf of DC or the North objected to that aspect of the process is irrelevant? You can object to Texas' process all you want, but whatever objections you might raise, those issues can't provide any justification for any of the North's actions if the North didn't object to them. And, in any case, they (to the extent there's any historical substance to your claims at all) obviously had nothing to do with what the war was fought over.
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  36. How would it even have been possible for the South to have fought to keep what their opponent was granting their right to keep without a fight? And, no, the North never fought to end slavery.
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  37.  @dylancloud97  The first step??? How would Republicans winning the presidency possibly have led to abolition? Not in any way that secession offered any prospect of preventing. Are you just pushing a completely unintelligible myth? And why do you think Southerners didn't actually care about all the things Republicans had already done and the things Republicans had actually said they were going to do, i.e. the things they actually said were the reasons they were seceding? You're saying Southerners wouldn't have really cared about any of those things apart from this inexplicable myth you have trying to tie those things to eventual abolition. That's pretty ridiculous even apart from the fact that you can't actually tie any of those things to eventual abolition or show how secession would have prevented Republicans from doing any of those things anyway (like sheltering fugitive slaves, excluding slavery from Kansas... which secession would have only made it easier for Republicans to do.) > The north was fighting to end it after 63. The Union continued to practice slavery itself throughout the entire war and beyond. Obviously the war was fought from beginning to end for the same purpose, and that was never to abolish slavery.
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  38. So why do you figure just about everyone on earth at the time, North and South and European..., pro-slavery, abolitionist, not-pro-slavery-but-willing-to-get-along-with-slavery... was, according to you, blind with regards to just about everything that was said directly about the war?
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  39. "And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man – although that was not the motive of the war – as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before... "All these cries of having “abolished slavery,” ... are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats – so transparent that they ought to deceive no one – when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has succeeded the war..." Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner
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  40.  @ApostleMarduk  The two sides spun things differently and made different arguments but as to what they were fighting over they said the same thing. Jefferson Davis: "we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone" Official Union declaration: "this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States [i.e. slavery], but... to preserve the Union [i.e. to deny the southern states the right to be let alone]"
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  41. None of the declarations of causes say anything about the war (which hadn't even started yet.) Nor do they say anything about any threat to slavery that secession would have offered any prospect of protecting against. So that leaves you with nothing but an unintelligible revisionist myth.
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  42. If South Koreans decided they no longer needed or wanted US military forces in South Korea but the US refused to leave and after months of attempts by South Korea to negotiate the withdrawal of US forces and repeated warnings South Korea finally forcibly evicted the US forces from South Korea (but without killing a single American), would you likewise conclude the US then had justification to conquer and subjugate all of South Korea and force DC rule on the South Korean people forever?
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  43.  @cliffordpearsonjr.9748  > nobody was forbidding them to have slaves!! Not only that, but there wasn't any chance in the foreseeable future of the northern states having anywhere close to the votes to do so, and the North then went to war with Lincoln offering his support for a proposed constitutional amendment to make the right of states to practice slavery constitutionally irrevocable.
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  44.  @aaronfleming9426  > The other section, while it certainly had racial injustices and labor abuses, had a free economy Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware contradict that childish narrative (and so did Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee until Lincoln called for an army to invade and subjugate the states that had initially formed the Confederacy.) > It is quite correct to say that the south had dominated federal institutions in the middle of the century. Until the North imported enough people with no attachment to America's founding principles and figured out it could win an outright majority in the electoral college with only thirty-some percent of the electorate (which isn't counting the South's black population at all) and proceed to rule without regard to constitutional limits.
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  45. ​ @aaronfleming9426  > the fault lines were clear: slavery. If the fault lines were clearly over slavery, then pro-slavery states wouldn't have fought on the supposedly anti-slavery side, continued practicing and legally protecting slavery throughout the war, and voted against abolishing slavery at the end of the war. And you wouldn't have to make your lame excuses for all the other ways in which the union didn't divide along pro- and anti-slavery lines. > As events played out, we can see they had no intention of heeding the Constitutional authority of the commander in chief. Certainly they didn't support a war to destroy government by the consent of the governed and against any meaningful constitutional checks on the federal government (which there wasn't any constitutional authority for the commander in chief to wage anyway), but until it came to that they (and AR, TN, and NC) chose to remain in the union under DC rule. > The slave holders held to the letter of the Constitution in regard to slavery, but in precious little else; and that's to say nothing of the spirit of the Constitution. In what respect would you like to imagine the southern states didn't hold to "the spirit of the constitution"? What "precious little else" other than "in regard to slavery" are you referring to? Or are you just entirely pulling vague nonsense entirely out of your ars?
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  46. BS!
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  47. Exactly right, except you can't honestly call anything a union that's based not on voluntary consent but on forcible subjugation.
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  48. The Confederate constitution prohibited protective tariffs. Fact.
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  49. None of those documents even mention the war. Nor do they mention an abolition amendment or anything else of the sort. Nor do they mention any more marginal issues relating to slavery that southern independence would have resolved in favor of southern slaveholders. The only issues relating to slavery that they discussed were issues like northern states not fulfilling their constitutional obligation under the constitution's fugitive slave clause, an obligation the northern states would have been absolved of with respect to the seceding states if they had just let them secede. But the documents that actually do tell us what the war itself was fought over make exceedingly clear that it wasn't fought over anything to do with slavery. For example, Congress officially declared by nearly unanimous votes of both chambers that, "this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States [i.e. slavery], but... to preserve the Union [i.e. maintain control over the southern states against their will, without their consent, and to deny them the right to independence and self-government]"
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  50.  @EPUEPUEPUEPU  > however it did not deal with the expansion of slavery Neither did secession, so that obviously wasn't what they were to any degree even indirectly fighting for.
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  51.  @ApostleMarduk  Neither did the Confederacy, as evidenced, among other things, by the fact that states in both the Union and the Confederacy continued keeping slaves after the Confederate States seceded. Do you even have a theory of what would have prevented the southern states from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded, such that it could possibly make any sense to say they seceded in order to keep slaves?
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  52.  @ApostleMarduk  So is that your way of saying you don't even have so much of a theory of what would have prevented the southern states from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded and that it therefore couldn't possibly make any sense to say they seceded in order to keep slaves?
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  53.  @ApostleMarduk  Is that your way of saying you don't even have so much as a theory of what the people seceding thought would have prevented the southern states from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded and that it therefore couldn't possibly make any sense to say they seceded in order to keep slaves? Alexander Stephens, 1860: "slavery was much more secure in the Union than out of it."
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  54.  @ApostleMarduk  Is that your way of saying you don't even have so much as a theory of what the people seceding thought would have prevented the southern states from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded and that it therefore couldn't possibly make any sense to say they seceded in order to keep slaves? If you have so much as a theory, try to clearly articulate it, but if you know there's no substance to your claims, then go ahead and share your next obfuscation with me. Alexander Stephens, 1860: "slavery was much more secure in the Union than out of it."
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  55.  @ApostleMarduk  > The actual hostility towards slavery could be fantasy for all I care. In other words, you don't even have so much as a theory of what the people seceding thought would have prevented them from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded, despite the fact that the seceding states that issued declarations of causes of secession (which you've quoted) described their grievances in careful detail. And it therefore couldn't possibly make any sense to say they seceded in order to keep slaves. What's significant about any "hostility toward slavery" was that it didn't consist (and Southerners knew it didn't consist) of an abolition amendment or anything else that would have prevented them from keeping slavery if they hadn't seceded, and therefore it couldn't possibly make any sense to say they seceded in order to keep slaves. I believe the Stephens quote was from a personal letter he wrote. I read it long enough ago that I can't remember the details for sure. Searching for the quote I find multiple historians and other people referencing an almost identical quote: "I consider slavery much more secure in the Union than out of it." That was a sentiment shared by other Southerners (whom I can quote) and also by northern abolitionists, although the abolitionists, of course, supported secession ("disunion" was the word they mostly used) because of it.
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  56.  @ApostleMarduk  I'm sure you have theories about lots of things. What you obviously don't have -- or you would have presented it already -- is a theory of what the people seceding thought would have prevented them from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded. And since there wasn't anything that would have prevented them from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded and since they knew that, it couldn't possibly make any sense to say they seceded in order to keep slaves. Do you even think A, B, or C were things that seceding offered any prospect of preventing? In any case, none of those things were things that would have prevented them from keeping slaves so even if seceding had offered some prospect of preventing or avoiding those things it didn't offer any prospect of preventing or avoiding what you claimed they seceded to avoid, namely something that would have prevented them from keeping slaves. > If a slaveholder heard people from free states were sympathizing with the guy who wants you dead, would he not be worried? First of all, none of the people that Brown's gang murdered were even slaveholders, so the threat they represented wasn't a threat particularly against slaveholders. It wasn't even particularly a threat against white Southerners as the first person they murdered was a free black Southerner. But more to the point, it most certainly wasn't a threat of Republicans amending the constitution to abolish slavery or anything else that would have prevented Southerners from continuing to keep slaves. So they obviously didn't secede in order to keep slaves, did they?
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  57.  @ApostleMarduk  I tell you what I don't see in that quote is any basis whatsoever for any theory of what the people seceding thought would have prevented them from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded. And since there wasn't anything that would have prevented them from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded and since they knew that, it couldn't possibly make any sense to say they seceded in order to keep slaves. But since you're not going to explain how your claim about the Confederate States could possibly make any sense, maybe we can look at this from a slightly different angle. You said the original 13 states didn't separate from England in order to keep slavery. Why not? They practiced slavery and they wanted to continue practicing slavery. Since there wasn't anything that would have prevented them, the original 13 states in 1776, from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't declared their independence from England and since they knew that, I think it couldn't possibly make any sense to say they separated from England in order to keep slaves. You apparently reject that line of reasoning and yet you come to the same conclusion. So why in the case of the original 13 states do you reject that reasoning and what is your own reasoning?
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  58.  @ApostleMarduk  Does that quote prove to you that the people that wrote that declaration believed there was something that would have prevented from continuing to keep slaves if they hadn't seceded? If you actually believed there was such a thing, why can't you tell me what it was (or what they thought it was)? But there wasn't any such thing, and the people of Mississippi (and the other southern states) knew it. And therefore it couldn't possibly make sense to say they secede to keep slaves, because they could have continued keeping slaves whether they seceded or not, and they knew it. You're not even disputing any of those facts, are you? Nor are you disputing the logic, as your refusal to answer my question about how that logic would apply to the original 13 states confirms.
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  59.  @ApostleMarduk  Do you even think any of the grievances Mississippi described were things that seceding offered any prospect of preventing? In any case, none of those things were things that would have prevented them from keeping slaves so even if seceding had offered some prospect of preventing or avoiding those things it didn't offer any prospect of preventing or avoiding what you claimed they seceded to avoid, namely something that would have prevented them from keeping slaves. Why are you so determined to avoid this simple, clear, and undeniable fact?
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  60.  @ApostleMarduk  If something was preventing Mississippi from keeping slaves or was going to (or even if Mississippians thought there was) why can't you say what that was? Obviously if there had been any such thing you would have long ago told me what it was. There was no such thing. That's a substanceless, inexplicable propaganda lie used as an excuse to try to justify the North's entirely unjustifiable war to subjugate the southern states and deny them their right to independence and self-government regardless of any and everything to do with slavery. You'd just find other excuses for denying the right of Texas (or Vermont or California or any other state) the right to declare independence today, wouldn't you? Even you don't believe the presence or absence... of slavery makes the least bit of difference when it comes to a states' right to declare independence and self-govern, do you? But to answer your question directly, it's entirely possible to thoroughly identify with something and want to secede from a state or union that allows the thing you thoroughly identify with. Do you think that's impossible?
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  61.  @orbituary  > states stating in their secession documents it was so they could keep slaves That's not true. Your summary there necessarily implies that they thought they couldn't keep slaves if they didn't secede, and the declarations of causes don't support that implication at all. The fact that they wanted to continue keeping slaves clearly isn't proof they seceded "so they could keep slaves," because Americans in 1776 wanted to continue keeping slaves, and no halfway reasonable person tries to argue that the original 13 states declared independence "so they could keep slaves," so you need to provide evidence for more than just the fact that they wanted to continue keeping slaves if you want to back up your claim. In particular, you need to show that they wouldn't have been able to continue keeping slaves if they hadn't seceded, such that secession was necessary for them to continue to do so. But, of course, that's not true. > The Confederate government itself was born upon their core belief that slavery should be upheld and in accordance with natural law. So what? What does that matter with regards to their desire for independence from the North? There wasn't anything they wanted to do because of those beliefs that the Union government wasn't willing to let them do as states in the Union, so what difference does it make? If Sam works for Bob and then Sam decides he wants to quit do you think Bob would be justified in denying Sam the right to quit and physically beating him back into submission if he tries to quit if it also happens to be true that Sam beets his wyfe? If Sam has been beeting his wyfe all along and Bob has known about it all along but has recognized that under the laws where Sam and Bob live that Sam is entirely within his legal right to beet his wyfe and if Bob also repeatedly declares that he has no intention of interfering with Sam beeting his wyfe, how do any of those facts about Sam and his wife give Bob any right to violently subjugate Sam and to deny him the right to quit working for him?
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  62.  @orbituary  The secession of SC, MS, FL, AL, GA, LA, and TX triggered the formation of the Confederate government, and their secession was triggered by the election of a Republican to the presidency. You don't think Republicans represented an abolition amendment or anything else of the sort (which is to say any attempt to use their constitutional power to abolish slavery in the slave states), do you? Not only did they (as a party and Lincoln as their candidate) repeatedly and categorically deny any interest in doing so, but they (1) wouldn't have had the votes to do so even if every state (and multiple more besides) that has been added to the US since Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959 had voted on their side so long as the already existing slave states hadn't supported it, and (2) they (Republicans in DC) actually helped pass a constitutional amendment through Congress in early 1861 (with Lincoln declaring that he had no objections to its ratification) that would have irrevocably removed even that possibility. Republicans did not represent any attempt to abolish slavery in the southern states through the federal government or by the northern states. That's just a completely historically baseless lie if that's what you believe.
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  63.  @chronogamer7901  "the Cornerstone Speech. The leaders of the Confederacy were very open and unambiguous about seceding to preserve slavery." What an absurd argument! Stephens (whose speech it was) said "slavery was much more secure in the Union than out of it." And you think he proves that the southern states seceded to "preserve" slavery? How do you preserve something by making it less secure? What nonsense! And from the cornerstone speech itself: "...notwithstanding their [Republicans'] professions of humanity, they are disinclined to give up the benefits they derive from slave labor. Their philanthropy yields to their interest. The idea of enforcing the laws, has but one object, and that is a collection of the taxes, raised by slave labor to swell the fund necessary to meet their heavy appropriations. The spoils is what they are after though they come from the labor of the slave." He didn't believe Republicans actually even wanted slavery to end.
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  64. > in the sense that every thing that caused it was ultimately rooted in slavery Whatever truth there is to that statement, you're still left with an argument as faulty as trying to justify the entire "War on Terror," the invasion of Iraq, etc., etc. on the basis that "everything that caused it was ultimately rooted in" Islam, arguing that Islam is bad, and therefore the US was fully justified in every aspect of the War on Terror. It doesn't matter how bad Islam is or is not, whatever your opinion on that question the answer is irrelevant to whether the War on Terror was justified. Even if the Republican-led North had been trying to abolish slavery in the South -- which Lincoln and the rest of the Republican party most definitely were not -- the South would still have had a right to independence self-government, contingent at best on meeting the North's demands on behalf of the South's slaves, but the historical reality is that the North didn't go to war making a single slavery-related demand of the southern states but went to war offering additional concessions to slaveholders on the condition that the southern states forfeit their right to independence and self-government. The North thus didn't have even a shred more justification in denying independence and self-government to the southern states than England had justification in denying independence and self-government to the 13 colonies, and the South had every bit as much right (and more) to defend their right to independence and self-government as the 13 colonies (which, of course, also practiced slavery) had in 1776.
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  65. 1. Declaring independence wasn't a declaration of war, and speeches from both sides from March of 1861 show that both sides were still talking about peace. 2. Declaring independence definitely shouldn't have been understood as a declaration of war because... 3. Declaring independence from "a much larger more industrialized population" is how the United States gained their independence. As James Madison put it, "This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs; but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation."
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  66.  @IronWarhorses  Alexander Stephens, March 1861: "As to whether we shall have war with our late confederates, or whether all matters of differences between us shall be amicably settled, I can only say that the prospect for a peaceful adjustment is better, so far as I am informed, than it has been. The prospect of war is, at least, not so threatening as it has been. The idea of coercion, shadowed forth in President Lincoln's inaugural, seems not to be followed up thus far so vigorously as was expected. Fort Sumter, it is believed, will soon be evacuated. What course will be pursued toward Fort Pickens, and the other forts on the gulf, is not so well understood. It is to be greatly desired that all of them should be surrendered. Our object is peace, not only with the North, but with the world. All matters relating to the public property, public liabilities of the Union when we were members of it, we are ready and willing to adjust and settle upon the principles of right, equity, and good faith. War can be of no more benefit to the North than to us. Whether the intention of evacuating Fort Sumter is to be received as an evidence of a desire for a peaceful solution of our difficulties with the United States, or the result of necessity, I will not undertake to say. I would feign hope the former. Rumors are afloat, however, that it is the result of necessity. All I can say to you, therefore, on that point is, keep your armor bright and your powder dry." Lincoln, March 1861: "there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices. "The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection. The course here indicated will be followed unless current events and experience shall show a modification or change to be proper, and in every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised, according to circumstances actually existing and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections."
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  67.  @IronWarhorses  But whatever the odds seemed to be before the war started that the southern states declaring that they simply wanted to go their own way and do their own thing would lead to war, they most certainly didn't do anything remotely akin to declaring war. Even if a woman has a violent boyfriend that she can expect based on the things he's said and past behavior to violently attack her if she tells him she's leaving him, it would still be completely dishonest to equate a woman declaring that she's splitting up with her boyfriend and offers to peaceably negotiate the division of any of their joint property with a declaration of war on her boyfriend. That's just completely bass-ackwards. And, again, declaring independence from "a much larger more industrialized population" is exactly how their great-grandfathers had gained their independence from England, so deride that idea all you want.
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  68. > Slavery was the key issue of the day. It became clear with the election of Lincoln that the southern "right" to slavery would soon be abolished. Nonsense! Even today, 160+ years later there still aren't even close to enough states in the union to ratify a constitutional amendment without the support of the states that were slave states in 1860. There was no threat of the North abolishing slavery in the South, and none of the seceding states said anything about anything of the sort. > The election of Lincoln in a landslide He needed 152 electoral votes to win. He won 180, but he only won thirty-some percent of the electorate, the lowest percentage of any president to ever win the electoral college. > when the South did not even include him on the ballot Were Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats on the ballot in Massachusetts? Who cares? What does it matter? In any case, it wasn't "cheating." And it obviously wouldn't have made a bit of difference if Lincoln had been on the ballot in any of the states that were so turned off by Republicans winning the election that they seceded in response to it. > The desire to self govern was the cause of the Civil War. Your conclusion is sound. But you could also look at it from the other perspective: The desire to deny self-government to the southern states was the cause of the war.
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  69.  @jiggyjerome7264  > every southern state that declared one of their reasons for war were slavery was doing the bidding of the rich people in their state But no southern state ever said it was seceding because it didn't want slavery to be abolished (or anything else of the sort.) That's a complete distortion of what the southern states actually said. Yes, they were pro-slavery (obviously, or they would have abolished slavery themselves), but they seceded to protect their right to self-government and the rule of law. There wasn't any threat to slavery that seceding ever offered any prospect of protecting against.
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  70. Do you think the war was fought over the northern states not returning fugitive slaves as they had a constitutional obligation to do, because that's the short answer of why South Carolina said it was seceding?
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  71.  @chrisjones7347  It's very simple: Lincoln, 1848: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world." That's the sacred right that Americans fought for in 1776 and that the southern Americans fought for in 1861, and it's the right the so-called Union fought to destroy. And everything else is just red herrings and ad hominems. The abolitionist George Bassett wrote in early 1861: "It is constantly said... that if our government cannot prevent a State from seceding at will, it is no government at all. But it is forgotten, that the true glory of our government—the queen beauty of our system is, that it ceases with the will of the people. Its true strength lies not in navies and battalions, but in the affections of the people. Numbers in our midst... are vainly boasting that we propose to show the world that we have a government that is strong enough to meet the exigency and to suppress rebellion. But they fail entirely to apprehend and appreciate the true theory of the American system. Their is the old European, and not the American, idea of government... "The true strength of a free government—and they are the strongest of all, is in the devoted attachment of its citizen sovereigns. Let this be forfeited, and the government falls. "A government which is strong by the exercise of military power over its own citizens, is not a free government, but a despotism." Abolitionist Lysander Spooner: "The whole affair... has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South. ... And to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and crimes, they attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they have “Abolished Slavery!” That they have “Saved the Country!” ... "The pretense that the “abolition of slavery” was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud... And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general – not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only “as a war measure,” ...in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man – although that was not the motive of the war – as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. ... "This, too, they call “Preserving our Glorious Union”; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated. All these cries of having “abolished slavery,” of having “saved the country,” of having “preserved the union,” ... are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats – so transparent that they ought to deceive no one – when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has succeeded the war..." > the Fugitive Slave Law at least serves in part to contradict the nonsensical State vs Federal rights argument. Only if you have no idea what anyone meant by "states rights" in the 19th century and have assumed some novel definition for yourself.
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  72. Lincoln: "I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
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  73.  @derps8690  > the seceding states declared their secession was over the institution of slavery What does it even mean (if it's not entirely unintelligible nonsense) for a secession to be "over the institution of [something]?
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  74.  @derps8690  Why do you keep making these claims that you won't explain what you mean by them? Is that because you know your argument depends on being vague and unintelligible? If you're not going to explain what you mean by your first claim, tell me what you mean by your latest claim that they fought for slavery. What do you think they were trying to gain for slavery by fighting? In any case, they didn't say, certainly not at the time, that they were fighting (as in waging war) for slavery, so why do you say so?
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  75.  @derps8690  Anything but explain yourself, huh? Is that because you're fully aware of the lies you're telling?
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  76.  @derps8690  Your personal behavior is as vile as what you're defending -- if you can even call a defense with no substance a defense -- what the abolitionist Joshua Blanchard described in the March 1861 issue of The Liberator, the abolitionist paper: "The doctrine that the prerogatives of government are more sacred and inviolable than the rights, liberties, and welfare and even lives of individual men, is now openly maintained by the advocates of an enforced union, in direction opposition to the principle of popular sovereignty.... The success of this compulsory measure, establishing the character of our national government as one maintained by coercion, and not by consent, would be an awful apostacy, a retrogression into the barbarous maxims of European domination, cemented in blood; an utter failure of the first magnificent experiment of popular government, the the exultation of tyrants, the disgrace of our land, the despair of all the friends of freedom in the world."
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  77.  @ApostleMarduk  > It's not noble, when the only reason states secede is so they can continuously enslave other people. First of all, whether a slave has a noble reason for wanting to be free and independent of his master ought to be irrelevant to the question of whether he has a right to freedom and independence. And if he, as the southern states did, is forced to fight for his right to freedom and independence, that's a noble fight regardless of what he wants to do with his freedom. What he wants to do with his freedom may or may not be noble, but his fight for freedom and independence can indeed be noble regardless. And in any case, fighting to deny other people their right to freedom and independence -- what the North did -- is unquestionably ignoble, and it couldn't be more disgustingly absurd to try to justify denying other people their freedom and independence on the grounds that slavery is bad. But secondly, the seceding states most definitely did not "secede... so they can continuously enslave other people," not if you mean they seceded in order to be able to continue to enslave people -- and if that's not what you mean, then you're just using misleading language to promote a lie. They knew they would be able to continue to enslave people regardless of whether or not they seceded, so the myth of some threat of abolition of perceived threat of abolition is entirely a lie with no basis in historical fact.
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  78. ​ @aaronfleming9426  > if enough territories were admitted as free states, there would be sufficient free-state political power to abolish slavery through a Constitutional amendment. You don't have a clue how many news states would have had to have been added to the union, do you? > Simple, and everyone knew it Not a single mention of a constitutional amendment in any of the declarations of causes of secession. Do you have a conspiracy theory to explain that? Or do you just not bother with historical evidence at all? > but no other nation ever recognized the CSA Why would monarchs claiming a divine right to rule over their people without their consent respect the principles of government by the consent of the governed? Of course they opposed the principles of free government. > The north paid about 80% of the tariffs Are you really stupid enough to believe that looking at which ports tariffs arrived in tells us in any meaningful sense who "paid the tariffs"?
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  79.  @TheStapleGunKid  "Lincoln was still willing to spend millions of federal dollars" Where did he offer millions? Show me (or point me to) the offer.
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  80.  @Mountaineer3615  "But the southern states' motivation was the expansion of slavery. They said so in their articles of secession..." No, they didn't! Seceding meant forfeiting their right to take slaves to Kansas, Nebraska, etc., not securing that right. "The experiment instituted by our revolutionary fathers, of a voluntary Union of sovereign States for purposes specified in a solemn compact, had been perverted by those who, feeling power and forgetting right, were determined to respect no law but their own will... "...never was there a people whose interests and principles committed them so fully to a peaceful policy as those of the Confederate States. By the character of their productions they are too deeply interested in foreign commerce wantonly to disturb it. War of conquest they cannot wage, because the Constitution of their Confederacy admits of no coerced association. Civil war there cannot be between States held together by their volition only. The rule of voluntary association, which cannot fail to be conservative, by securing just and impartial government at home, does not diminish the security of the obligations by which the Confederate States may be bound to foreign nations. In proof of this, it is to be remembered that, at the first moment of asserting their right to secession, these States proposed a settlement on the basis of the common liability for the obligations of the General Government." -Jefferson Davis, February 22, 1862
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  81. Fought to protect slavery??? From what? What do you think would have happened to slavery if they hadn't fought that fighting offered any prospect of protecting against? And as for "protecting the union," if you're trying to forcibly subjugate people to your rule, whatever you're protecting is no longer a "union." That's like trying to "protect your employee" by physically beating him when he tries to quit and go work somewhere else. If you're beating him to keep him from quitting, you're not "protecting your employee" but rather trying to turn him into a slave.
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  82. Not exactly. Even though Republicans only won somewhere around 37% of the electorate, it didn't matter that the Democrats were divided, because Republicans won an absolute majority in the electoral college, so it wouldn't have made any difference if a single Democratic candidate had won the other 63% of the vote, the Republicans would have won anyway according to the same rules and by the same math by which they actually won.
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  83. > The first part (up to the second comma) is saying 'An Army is necessary to protect the State'. No! The first part is saying the exact opposite. As Elbridge Gerry, delegate to the constitutional convention and fifth vice presidents of the US said, "What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty." The first part of the second amendment is actually pretty much just another way of saying what the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution said before: "That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up..." And several other states had similar statements about standing armies in their original constitutions and bills of rights.
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